In an era when many online services are given free of charge, the Tom McCall Center for Policy Innovation invites students, faculty and staff to think critically about the way in which online collection of user information impacts society.
On March 3 at 7 p.m. the center will host “Privacy in the Age of Facebook: Choices, Challenges, Consequences” at the Forest Grove Public Library on Pacific Avenue.
“We want to discuss the various tradeoffs that come with being online in the age of Edward Snowden,” said Center Director Jim Moore.
The panelists scheduled for the event are Josh Aberant, the Postmaster of Twitter; Steven Wax, a former U.S. Federal Public Defender who worked out of Portland; and Ellen Rosenblum, Oregon’s Attorney General.
The event is part of the Tom McCall Center’s wider mission, which, as Moore puts it, is “to get students and policymakers working together.”
This past October, for example, the Tom McCall Center hosted U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) at Taylor Auditorium in Marsh Hall. Wyden spoke as part of a community conversation called “Inequality: the View from Washington, D.C. to Forest Grove.”
The Tom McCall Center, created in 2010, is a spiritual successor to the Tom McCall Forum, which ran for 25 years but was discontinued in 2007. Moore said that the event, in which prominent political figures from the national arena would come to debate, quickly became very expensive, costing upwards of $10,000. Additionally, students were not very involved in the debates, particularly in the later years.
Moore aims to keep this new incarnation of the Tom McCall Center much more connected with the students and other on-campus organizations. He named the Centers for Civic Engagement and Peace and Spirituality as examples of organizations that the Tom McCall Center tries to work with.
“This is another great way to focus on civic engagement,” he said.
In addition to directing the Center, Moore is a Political Science professor at Pacific and frequent political commentator. According to the Center’s website, “Dr. Moore is one of the most widely used political analysts in the Pacific Northwest, cited in more than 3,200 newspaper and magazine articles, interviewed more than 5,100 times, and appearing frequently on television and radio to explain the political events of the day.”
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